Administration and Social Life under Vijayanagar c16.9

c16.9

Apart from these general considerations some features of the Vijayanagar edifices strike us as peculiar to that age. "Of all the parts of the edifice, that part, the form of which has varied in the most characteristic fashion is perhaps 'the corbel' which is placed below the capital of the pillars." It differs from age to age. This part of the edifice "which is no other than the extremity of the beams cut with the blows of the hatchet" received some ornamentation in the later Cōḷa and the Vijayanagar periods. While in the Pallava period its design was plain, in the Cōḷa period it was fashioned in the form of doucines, and in the Vijayanagar period it became changed into the form of flowers falling down. But later the corbel underwent a further change and the drooping flower came to be separated from the rest of the stone, and it has now at its end a sort of finial (pūmunai).